Or Is It?
by Azabeth Or Otherwise
Summary: Little moments that may have been the beginning of something epic. Takes place during our favorite scene in "Weapons of Class Destruction". Veronica leaves Logan at the Camelot, and Logan can't help but ask himself a loaded question: what was the moment when the feeling started? Oneshot. You've probably read this setup before, here is my take on the workings of Logan's mind.


**Disclaimer: Completely and entirely, conclusively and irrevocably, not mine. Songs quoted, almost-quoted and hinted at are equally not mine.**

* * *

**OR IS IT?**

Her car takes off and he follows its departure with his eyes until LeBaron is out of sight, and then he blinks hard, shakes his head a little, and the reverie is broken.

Logan thinks he can't believe what just has happened, not really. It all started so sudden, and so unexpected. It was him who kissed her, but it was the rush of the moment, he couldn't just let her bolt after her little peck that got him awestruck and unbelieving, and let her think that her kiss was a mistake on her part. It was her greatest idea ever, if he himself can say so! He reels after the whirlwind of feelings the kiss awoke. Funny thing that never before had he really thought about kissing Veronica Mars. He sort of thought of _her_ sometimes, but that was to be expected. First she was his friend, then she was his scapegoat, now she was his – solid ground, perhaps? How things can change. And really, how do they change? When was that moment when Veronica stopped being the bane of his existence and turned to a person he wanted to kiss and never leave?

Now that he thinks about it, for him it was always the strongest of emotions where Veronica was concerned, however good or bad, never he was indifferent. So when exactly it started, that feeling, growing inside of him, clenching, shaking up and simultaneously warming everything in him in the wake of that earth-shattering kiss? He probably should stop thinking those dangerous thoughts – the kiss is probably just an adrenaline induced explosion of a sort. Or is it?

He thinks back trying to resurrect all their moments that mattered, looking for the one when his feelings for her changed. Yes, emotionally it was a rollercoaster with them, whole multitude of controversial feelings. But if there is a change, there has to be a moment when change occurred, right? So what was it?

It's like that time when he came to her office with a check after she investigated his mother's suicide: not that it was necessary, but seemed like a valid reason to get to see her – how fucked up is that, huh? And today, he didn't need to call her at all, it was that he suddenly had an excuse to do just so and he did. He was tired of fooling himself: he knew he was seeking her out. He missed her terribly this year, and he didn't want to miss her anymore. It's just, it felt so fulfilling to have her around. And then there were some noises on the line, and she sounded scared and probably in danger, and there wasn't any doubt for him about what to do. Just few short months ago he did body shots from her just to hurt her a bit worse than she hurt him, and now he was whole-heartedly focused on one thing: so that no one could hurt _her_. The thought of someone other than him hurting her, well, _he knew_ not to push too far and not inflict physical pain, but others, what are they capable of? He knew answer to that one all too well. If he had a moment to pause and think about it he would be surprised to admit that sometime along the way, between friendship and animosity, hurt and comfort, smiles and attraction he developed some weird crush on her, started to care about her all over again, just for her as she was now and not the cherished memory of her "before". But there was no time to think of crushes and feelings when only things that pulsated through his brain were: what is happening to her? is she alright? will she be safe? won't he be late? Keeping someone safe and protected was sort of new territory for him. To give credit where credit's due, Veronica was the one who risked going there first.

He just can't shake the memories of the moment when she held him while he cried. He will never comprehend how life contradicts words sometimes, how words designed to depict life fail over and over again. Like this moment in the Neptune Grand lobby, it was huge, what was happening, and still the only way how he could describe it – how it needed to be described – were such simple little words. He cried and she held him. That's it. And it was _huge_. Probably it wasn't the moment he was looking for though, it wasn't about his feelings towards her at all. The moment shifted their relationship considerably, but some sort of feelings, unnamed and unnoticed, but no longer unwelcome, where already there. If it weren't he would never break down like that in front of her, in front of anyone at all. He would bottle it up a little longer, maybe till he could jump into his SUV and pretend the outside world is securely locked out, or more likely, till he grabbed some liquor and – welcome, forgetting and ignoring, I missed you not. But she was there for him and he allowed her to. Or perhaps, he trusted her to be there for him and she was. Comfort. Funny he would trust her with that. Funnier even, how easy it was.

But whatever trust he may have felt reestablished then, it was all gone in a moment once he accidentally stole a glance at Veronica's laptop screen at her office. He was there to give her a check for her help and yes, he remembered they had classes together, so maybe it was a little bit simply to see her. He still couldn't shake the imperceptible feeling he got at the memory of her cradling him like a broken child he was. But he saw her investigation files opened and the same instant, it's gone. The next thing he knew the same betrayal like year ago washed over him, sickening and sticky and nauseous, just like he remembered. He should have known better of course. He browsed through her files, not feeling the least bit guilty, for as far as he was concerned, she was the one in the wrong. Seemed like thinking worst of everyone was a new MO for her. Just what's wrong with that girl? She wasn't like that when he knew her! Then again, she hasn't been the girl he knew for quite some time now. He's not sure if he was sadder for the girl long gone or for this new girl who had no place in his shell of a life. He was sad, frustrated and angry to find his own file there as well. Solid alibi, huh. What if she knew there was no alibi? Oh, she would probably eagerly jump to a certain conclusions. He half wanted to come clean with her, just to spite her, just to pop her film-noir bubble she designed around her. But he was afraid how she might look at him after that. He was afraid that he wouldn't cope with her thinking he might have killed Lilly. He was coward like that. He didn't like how emotional he was over this, over her mistrust, over _her_. Well they were not friends anymore, she could think whatever she wanted of him and of them. That's when she caught him and they argued about it without real heat because above all things, Logan felt weak and disappointed. He was disappointed _and_ a disappointment _in advance_. Well that was a confusing moment, if you ever had one. Add that to the list. "I loved Lilly", she said. And he almost said, "I know", but stumbled upon his own thought, "I loved her too". He thinks he was ashamed of the past tense. He thinks he still is.

There was this other moment when he tried to forcefully push his thoughts of Veronica back to their regular course. He was sitting at the school counselor's chair. This woman had no idea whatsoever what he felt and what he needed, and still she probed him with her textbook questions as if some framed paper suddenly made her privy to his innermost. She had no fucking right to know anything about Lilly, except she though she did and this angered Logan and he bit down his impulse to smash something on her table, the stapler or something, just so she would shut up and think for one damned minute. But then to put insult to an injury he just had to bring Veronica into the conversation, and she asked if he felt it was her fault, and without second thought all his anger towards her resurfaced and he vented. The pain of losing Lilly was so fresh that moment like a wound re-opened, and he was reminded once again why it was necessary to hate Veronica, why it was the right thing and not some _compensation_ or whatever those scholar folks called it. After the session he ditched the rest of the classes, grabbed JD bottle and hid in the pool house to think over their little session. When alcohol managed to subdue some Lilly-induced pain, his thought reverted back to her. Veronica was his friend, too, he said. Was she though? Best friend's girlfriend and girlfriend's best friend, sure, but his friend? And was it sadness he felt at the thought she probably wasn't and as for now, never will be? The moment passed as quickly as it came, sort of emotional tide wave that he tried to ride but failed miserably. He felt broken all of a sudden. He lost Lilly, he was losing Duncan to his emotionless cocoon, he made Veronica leave. He couldn't decide which saddened him more. He was guilty for all of it really, but this moment of wobbliness passed and he shook Veronica from his head, once and for all he decided. Whatever they had been before, things were what they were, status quo and all. However you don't exactly control it, do you? He at least doesn't. It was always like that, life has just been happening to him. And so did Veronica.

By Christmas she crept back into his life. Oh she had no idea but did she. It was all awkward and confusing around her all of a sudden. Logan refused to pay attention to it back then, and he still has his doubts if there was any romantic awareness involved. She never disturbed his dreams, his eyes never lingered for too long – they _lingered_, mind you, for he was a teenage male in his prime, and she was sexy as a bobcat, you had to be blind not to appreciate that. He maybe had been caught in her stare for longer than he would have liked and enjoyed it. He maybe started to seek her out with his eyes in a crowd just to catch a glimpse of her enough to make a good guess on her mood today, and to return his attention back to his business instantly. He maybe probably had. Not that he analyzed it or anything, it wasn't as if it meant something. So he kept glancing, what of that? He really just got tangled in all that friends/enemies thing and didn't know what to make of her, so yeah, subconsciously she was on his mind, as a friend or rather as a non-friend. She troubled him, but not like _that_, not quite, or not at all, or, colliding as it may seem, both. So that way Christmas came unnoticed, what with the poker games and money thefts, and here it was, already around the corner, where his mother prepared some greatly artificial event to please equally artificial Neptune residents. And one day Veronica just stepped into the pool house, talking business and it was so easy to slip into their bantering routine he enjoyed so much, whether it got Veronica offended or not. Just like always their conversation ended with nothing and she turned to go. And that was the moment. Some sort of crucial moment at least, he realizes now, at the Camelot motel balcony. The first moment he ever experienced when he did not want her to leave. That's in her nature though, leaving, or rather escaping, he thinks meaning her hasty departure just then as well. So he didn't want her to go. He didn't think he wanted her to _stay_ exactly either, but well, no way of knowing the ways of a heart. It was probably that in-between moment on the fence, the fence between what was already left behind and what was yet to come.

It was like a force of nature (and he would rather avoid naming the exact sappy force of nature he thought she was like that moment), her funny face and sunny smile, she was making lighthearted no ill-tempered, though slightly emasculating, jokes on them and he didn't even try to stop from smiling. He grinned actually at some joke of hers, and it was nice to have this girl back in his life however indirectly. "Back" though? No, this Veronica was never in his life before, in fact, all of them, Logan and Duncan, Lilly included, were devoid of this side of their friend. Lilly saw that in her probably, she always talked about some potential and wild side of Veronica, Lilly was kicking and tricking it out of her. And in her death she succeeded apparently. What a waste that it finally was there, and they weren't.

It was a surprisingly riveting moment when she smiled at him during their "whodunit" poker night. It somewhat caught him off guard that she answered his tentative smile with a grin of her own. Not that she was smiling and while doing it turned to look around and her gaze fell upon him. No, she looked up, at him, and smiled, well grinned but definitely not smirked. Logan couldn't quite formulate how that made him feel but all of a sudden he felt thousand of swirling quiet emotions. He was smiling at her partly appreciating her skills, partly encouraging, and partly because he was watching her this whole evening and he simply wanted to smile. He wanted to communicate something hopeful with this smile, he rarely felt hopeful, but here she was, bright and inspiring, and it made him feel giddy to see her like that. And then she smiled. For a moment he forgot what he was doing and what those rectangular things in his hands with numbers and doodles were, but it fled in a moment so he decided maybe it was nothing. Who is forgetting how to breath because a girl's smile, what is he, 14? But he wondered maybe this tendency, about her never troubling his dreams, would be improved tonight, maybe thinking of her smile will be a warm milk to his bad dreams. But as luck would have it, he never slept at all that night, and when he closed his eyes it was his dad he saw, bleeding red in his crispy white shirt, color combination he will feel nauseous of long after. And just as he was drifting off on the dawn of a Christmas morning, drunk out of sanity and exhausted, maybe just for a fleeting moment it was Veronica's worried face looking straight at him with immense concern while her dad was leading her away of this damned place, to the car, to the safety and sanity of her home. Soon after, Veronica stopped plaguing his mind at all. As did Lilly. In fact, the only person he could think about was his mother.

Before that, long before temporary armistice and momentary smiles, he vaguely remembers glances were exchanged, laced with worry and sadness, but can't pinpoint the timeframe, so insignificant it seemed. Probably then, it's not the moment he looks for, but he still tries to clear the details. Two of them were standing in the school hall, watching Duncan disappear in the bathroom. It is "two of them" and not "they" by any stretch. Two people as separate as it gets – by life, by circumstances, by their own deeds, by whatever. Still some strings from the past remained untouched it seems. Duncan connects them. Both of them care for him and afraid to watch him spiraling down. He saw it in her eyes in that split moment their looked at each other. The connection and recognition, and it confused him because it didn't fit, Veronica didn't fit anymore. So he broke the eye contact and followed Duncan. But it was clear to him now: you can't cut a person out of your life while you have something important in common to hold you together. At least it doesn't work like he thought. Duncan still was their common ground, pretend otherwise or not. And Lilly, she also bound them together and that would never change. But he forbade himself thinking about that.

He was reminded though, soon enough. She caught him off guard when he was working on this video; he was off-balanced enough to be unsettled by her. He was watching Lilly for a couple hours now, making pointless footnotes off the tapes that were all about her but somehow so distinctively not her Logan was frustrated out of his mind. Her liveliness was too powerful to be fixated on camera, it seemed. He couldn't pay her credit, it was more than he could deal with. And once again he felt as if he let her down, and God what a loser he was, he couldn't even commemorate the girl he loved so much, and then again there was this other time he let her down, his ultimate failure. Then Veronica was there asking him questions and they – dare he say, talked? She didn't realize – hell, he didn't realize till now – but she helped him not to fall over the ledge that moment. It is strange how she just keeps doing it. Next day she brought him her tape. No, she brought him Lilly. Logan cried editing the Homecoming scenes. Not only mourning his first love, he shed tears in regret for what they had, and what they never would again. Neither together, nor separately. He thought of Duncan, how he lost some part of his friend, how Duncan lost a part of himself. How Veronica lost all of her friends at once and Duncan, who also lost Veronica. And Logan lost her too, and for the first time probably that thought hurt like hell. Why they kept doing it, why couldn't they hold on onto each other? He knew the answer of course, but what if he was wrong? Then he messed up again and for good, no news there. This is why he watched Veronica while she watched Lilly's tribute, crying and laughing through her sorrow, he knew the feeling. She caught him looking and he smiled gratefully. Not for the tape, but for reminding him of them, for making him wonder if they were still standing together, despite appearances, on their common ground that was their love for Lilly.

There were times when he tried so hard not to dwell on anything remotely concerning Veronica Mars, that the fact in itself should have started him thinking. Like when she was with Troy. It somehow bothered Logan and he once pointed them out to Duncan, sort of shared it with him. Duncan seemed to be indifferent though. Shouldn't Logan be the first to feel indifferent about Veronica with one guy or the other, wasn't he the one who feed shamelessly on those rumors of her whoring herself out? So he sort of stopped noticing and got used to the idea. But when he first saw them together he was hit with some sort of wrongness in that picture, like a jigsaw piece misplaced, and whether it was new guy or Veronica in the wrong place, it was that she didn't belong to that picture. They, four of them belonged together, and it was bitter and unfair that that jigsaw was scattered all over the place hopelessly unfixable. Fab Four wasn't just a pretty name or a juicy gossip, they were so perfect and so whole like a family he wished he had. What else was wrong was that he was more disturbed by Veronica flirting with some random guy than by his own girlfriend throwing calculating glances at the said guy. That moment Logan asked himself would that moment ever came when Veronica stop matter to him at all, like he promised himself she would. Back then he didn't have an answer, though he was afraid to admit, he got his inkling.

He knows for sure that when he first saw "the new" Veronica his mind went blank for a moment. They were chatting with guys near his X-Terra the first day of school this year when this old fashioned LeBaron pulled up to the parking lot and she came into sight. He doesn't know how but even from the back, even with this new haircut, he recognized her instantly. But she was – damn, she was a totally different, he knew her for god knows how long, and suddenly she is altogether different, another person, it was like he was seeing her for the first time, however surreal this was for déjà vu. His mouth went dry. She was goddamn sexy with her new short hair. He never liked short hair on girls, but she suddenly made perfect sense like this. Her haircut, her top and her short skirt, everything about her screamed sassy. And her knee-high dyke boots, oh those _boots_. Even more fucking sexy than fucking knee socks, and she was so not 12 anymore, and oh god, what was he thinking? And then he was thinking about _this_ Veronica in soccer uniform and _that_ knee socks and that was unacceptable. She was Lilly's friend, for once! And he reminded himself of her betrayal and how she was an enemy now. So no thoughts of sexy boots and sassy looks will do. Angered at himself beyond belief he made his way towards school blocking out surprised whistles of his friends noticing Veronica's arrival. He had no idea what happened to _that_ Veronica, but _this_ one was a stranger to him, he didn't owe her anything.

Or (speaking about socks) was it the very first time he saw her, in her soccer uniform which he found disturbingly appealing? No, that's ridiculous, that was just a momentary thing back then. He was totally smitten with Lilly even after a two day acquaintance. She was 13 and so grown-up, already coming into herself, clothes showing off her breasts and legs, lipstick drawing attention to her lips, her laugh catching his attention once and for all. Logan was drawn to her from the moment he saw her like a moth to the fire, and God, what a fire she was (and damn, what a moth _he_ was). So what was that about a joyful child-like girl he saw bouncing down the school hall after her soccer practice, where Kane siblings were waiting for her to come home together, with Logan in tow? She was such a kid at the moment, and so short, she could easily be 11, but Logan couldn't help but find her attractive. Knee socks can to that to a boy, you know. Knee socks and perky blondes. He remembers how he even stopped in the middle of his conversation with Lilly to study this girl for a moment longer and maybe to capture this endless joy radiating off her. How someone can be this open to this stupid ugly world, he thought to himself with childish blatancy. Just then the girl stopped and looked up seeking with her shiny blue eyes the eyes of Duncan, Logan's first friend ever, and gazed at him like a lovesick puppy she probably was. Good things come to good people, that's right, Logan decided watching the pair and turned back to Lilly who was just introducing them to each other. _Veronica_, huh.

Now though he watches the dust from under her tires settle and it's clear as a day: if it wasn't for his impulsive phone call, their kiss would have never happened. If it wasn't for his peeking at her files, their kiss would have never happened. If he listened to everyone telling him his mother was dead, their kiss would have never happened. The ways those little moments are aligning.

And after all, isn't there more to all those momentary things? Moments sum up and make all the time in the universe. Insignificant things sum up and make something monumental. Even all things epic start with a first step.

So could it be just that, a momentary thing, what they shared here? Maybe. Or could it be a momentary thing that will lead up to something epic? Perhaps. One thing he knows for sure. Whatever lies in the past, this moment – right here, right now – is the moment when his life changed forever. For now he can only hope it is the same for her.

THE END

OR IS IT?

**A/N: In case someone is confused about fractured timeline, I gave you all the pointers you need to restore the order of Logan's memories, but it didn't felt right to leave them in chronological order. After all, path down the memory lane doesn't care about chronological.**

**A/N 2: Wasn't going to mention it, but if anyone was counting, the total 42 of a word "moment" and its derivatives – is pure coincidence. Say hello to Douglas Adams if you smiled at the number. Hope I didn't go overboard with refrain though.**


End file.
